Thursday, May 29, 2014

Pangrammatical Laces

Sometimes the terms of the Pangrammaticon "cross over" from one side of the knowledge-power divide to the other. I think I just discovered an interesting case. "Freedom" is an ostensibly political notion, and belongs on the power side of the divide. Indeed, desire, which is also an aspect of power, ultimately desires freedom—all desires are ultimately desires to be free, and what we want to be free from or to is what differentiates the various desires. Desire's pangrammatical supplement is "belief", and belief is to restraint (limits, discipline) what desire is to freedom. So far, everything is nice and tidy.

But concepts are to belief what emotions are to desire. And Heidegger explains that the point of philosophical inquiry into, for example, the concept of technology, is "to develop a free relationship to it". Indeed, I would say that the concept is the pivot point of our freedom with respect to our beliefs. Similarly, emotions shape desire, which is only possible if they restrain, limit or discipline them. So it would seem that the concepts are the eyelets through which the laces of grammar let freedom pass through our knowledge, and, on the other side, emotions are the eyelets through which restraint may pass through power, binding the two vast fabrics of the Pangrammaticon together.